just checkin’ in mid-vacation at a hostel in halifax.  here’s some highlights from my trip thus far:

wolverines on bibles on the US-canadian border:

googly-eyed lemon slices:

lobster-people roaming the streets in apparent distress:

here we saw a woman chasing after a man who has stole the bottom portion of her papasan chair:

gnome pinup photos:

possibly the best movie ever:

questionable labor policies in new brunswick:

more to come. hooray.

… I have been crazed preparing for a roadtrip to the maritime provences of canada with my dearlingest best friend. And admidst all the hubbub I forgot about NSTGD.

I hope that perhaps this will help you forgive me:

That’s right.  It’s Baconhenge.

I hope to blog from the road…

I subscribe to a 3.98 gaflillion (approx) rss feeds.

While catching up, I noticed a link on we-make-money-not-art’s feed to a wired artcle called “a nation of guinea pigs” - which, oh my god, promised to be the most amazing article ever written - A whole nation?! full of guinea pigs?! where? what are their primary exports? is the kinship system lineal or dravidian? etcetera.

and anyway.

the article was obviously not about that, at all*.

but to assuage my intense disappointment, I made the following:

that is all.

*apparently drug companies are exploiting corrupt south asian health regulations to perform questionably ethical clinical trials on lots and lots of resource-deprived people. which is awful. and not to be made fun of.

I truly hit the Internets jackpot here, my dearlings. but you know what, I’m going to shush-up because, behold! the pictures speak for themselves:

for your consideration, “hair hats“, by japanese artist, nagi noda

please, PLEASE, let this trend catch on.

via designboom.

If pressed, I could certainly think of far worse blog-schticks to become mildly famous for than for all my slug-talk recently. and thus, here’s summore:

hug-a-slug!

darling plush nudibranches can be bought by you in the passive voice on weirdbuglady’s etsy shop here.

Surrealist Slugs

my wonderously wonderous newfie friend miss lisa has shared with me the following finalist for the National Film Theatre/Hayward Gallery’s 60-Second Surreal competition, “the room”: starring, obviously, a slug or, the shadow of a slug. (to watch, click here and select “the room”)

*at least it does in kafka on the shore. well, leeches. ok so leeches and slugs aren’t the same. blablabla who died and made you Captain Science?**

**it has been a long, long week.

I’ve been bookmarking affordable art stuffs over the last few months and it’s time to share! this may become a series. my love of the following burns with the fire of one thousand suns.

Cardinal & Deer by Berkeley Illustration, buy here for $7-$15. They are just so stately-looking.

if only we could wear pants & Up to no good, marc johns, buy his prints here: $16-$20.

antler girl and horse hostess by Ashley Alexander (or “I’m Smitten”), buy here for $40 each. adore. also, I appreciate another opportunity to use my cryptozoology tag.

and last, but in no way least… No one wants to play sega with Harrison Ford, Brandon Bird, buy here for $7.99 (unsigned). and if you aren’t into lime green, it comes in many alternate shades of awesome.

just tellin’ it like it is:

note: should anyone decide to make a movie about me, please hire a british 1970s-nature-documentary narrator. thank you.

Mr. Toledano takes pictures of recently-emptied bankrupt business offices.  They are funny but not funny: haha, more like funny: whoa-I-didn’t-think-it-was-possible-for-cubicled-fluorescent-lighted-
offices-to-look-even-more-depressing.

Just when you thought you had seen the final slug this month on NSTGD, the folk behind the “little people” tiny street art project have gone and a-started graffiti-ing snail shells…

and they call it Inner City Snail, and it makes me all pitter-pattery with joy. Also, the little people take snail public transport it seems…

swoon.

Also - hello! to the 1 billion extra hits I have gotten since the lovely jules over at ikeahacker posted my fira-shelf becomes disco-drawers how-to.

via rebet:art.

All I’m saying is, I sincerely doubt that this enraged burro was unprovoked… (my favorite part: “Around here, if someone commits a crime they are jailed,” Gomez said — “no matter who they are.”)

Donkey jailed for ornery
behavior

1 day ago - associated press

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico (AP) — A donkey is doing time in southern Mexico for assault and battery.

The animal was locked up at a local jail that normally holds people for public drunkenness and other disturbances after it bit and kicked two men near a ranch in Chiapas state, police said Monday.

Officer Sinar Gomez said the donkey will remain behind bars until its owner agrees to pay the men’s medical bills.

“Around here, if someone commits a crime they are jailed,” Gomez said — “no matter who they are.”

The owner, Mauro Gutierrez, told The Associated Press he would try to reach a friendly arrangement to pay the men’s bills, estimated at US$420 (euro270).

The victims said the donkey bit Genaro Vazquez, 63, in the chest on Sunday and then kicked 52-year-old Andres Hernandez as he tried to come to the rescue, fracturing his ankle.

“All of a sudden, the animal was on top of us like it was rabid,” Hernandez said.

Police said it took a half-dozen men to control the enraged burro.

Chiapas police have thrown animals in the slammer before, including a bull that devoured corn crops and destroyed two wooden vending stands in March.

In 2006, a dog was locked up for 12 days after biting someone. His owners were fined US$18.

NOTE: I was very very close to calling this post “feather-man in the netherlands”.

It seems as though a bird-person has built a huge barnacle-looking nest on the side of an apartment building in the netherlands…

I would tell you more, but the website is in some sort of bizarre unintelligible ‘bird-person’ language:

found here.

… but it seems as though the sea slug (specifically the chromodoris toxic nudibranch) might be the new Cutest Most Wonderfulest Sea Creature of All Time, Ever.

I mean, really, what? are you kidding? it’s smiling for heavens-sakes. truly there is *almost* no competition.

Thank you to dearlingest lauren who shared this collection of amazing photographs of sea slugs courtesy of National Geographic.

Hi hello, so I recently discovered the craft-tastic website “Ikea Hacker” and it is giving me hope for creativity and unique-snowflakey-ness in a world full of unfinished pine and a preposterous swedish-meatball-to-person ratio.

here’s my rant:

In my 6-plus years living in and visiting lotsa NYC 20-something-people’s apartments, ikea’s brand lexicon has infested my subconscious. I want to kick myself in the face with smelly soccer cleats every time I accidentally say things like “oh I love your new living room, I didn’t know you could get the poang in periwinkle!” or “you are right, it would be nice if the billy shelves could come with a more leksvik finish.” etc.

my point is that if I have to see identical design everywhere I go*, it would be rad if folks gave their ikea-loot some pieces of flair, and ikea-hacker has lots of great ideas.

here’s how I turned my $13 pine “fira” mini-chest into my very own sparkley-disco-drawers:

materials

• 1 ikea fira mini-chest
• chrome aluminum spray paint (the can says it’s for cars, but whatever.)
• sea-mist wood stain (or whatever color, really - I mean EVERYTHING goes with sparkley)
• polyurethane clear gloss sealant (or something similar)
• those sponge-y foam paint thingers
• sand-paper
• ignore the steel brush in the photo below. I had orginially thought that I would distress the wood to make antique-looking disco-drawers, but not only was that absurd, it also made the most irritating noise ever in practice.

instructions:

1. sand the wood lots and lots, and wipe off all the sandy-bits.
2. take out the drawers and set aside, paint the base with your wood-stain following the directions on the can. Do this as many times as it takes to get the shade you want.



3. then open your window, shake up the chrome spray paint can a whole lot, hold each drawer outside your window and spray it with paint on every side. DO NOT spray paint in your house, unless you would like silver spots on your floor, and an intense paint-fumes-headache. Set your drawers somewhere to dry.



4. Seal it with the polyurethane, let it dry and you are done. wooooo.
5. then fill it with your treasured items, like polaroid film and bunny ears.

*yes, I am prone to hyperbole.

I have just now noticed that Helen Q. ReadySteadyGo!-pants, the co-founder of my embroidery club and quite possibly the smartest person with whom I have ever shared french toast, has tagged me to continue a “6 unimportant things about you” blog-meme-a-mabob. Her response is delightful (also her blog is my pretty much my favorite ever).

here’re my 6 useless me-facts:

1) I can entertain myself for hours and hours by adding my own 3rd person backing vocals to songs sung in the 1st person, on the radio.

For example:

Meatloaf: I would do anything for love…
Me in a high falsetto: he would do anything for love…
Meatloaf: but I won’t do that…
Me, again: oh no he won’t!

ad nauseum.

(’hifi’ by artist chris silas neal)

2) I will go to great lengths to remove the white umbilical-cord-looking thing (called “chalazae“, see #4 & 13 in diagram below) from eggs before I bake with them. If I remove too much of the clean egg white in the process, I will crack another egg and replace the removed amount so that I don’t destroy the recipe. I know it’s harmless and tasteless and that technically its a sign of the eggs freshness, but it is not my fault that it is also the Grossest Thing Ever.

3) I have a small collection of celebrity hand-turkeys.

• Frank Black (from the pixies) - collected by me at an album signing at a barnes and noble.
• John Entwistle (bassist of The Who) - collected by my crosscountry-roadtrip-#1 friend, christian.
• Question Mark (of ? and the Mysterians) - collected for me at this year’s ponderosa stomp by my dear friend nick.

4) As a child, I thought the small chicken pox scar in the center of my forehead was where my unicorn-horn used to be.

5) I sometimes participate in harmless fibbery, en masse. Here are a sampling of untruths I have helped spread:

• The pasta-serving-spoon/fork-thing is technically called a “Supple Gaga”.
• The speed limit on Minnesota highways is relative and determined by momentum - the higher the mass of your vehicle, the slower you are allowed to drive. Hence motorcycles can go 100 mph while 18-wheelers must go 35.
• Regis Philbin invented the choco-taco.
• I have a silent ‘3′ in the middle of my name: “mere3dith”.

6) Ever since 9/11, I have a cnn.com-compulsion. I was in college at the time and we did not have a television in our campus-apartment. So to get the most updated info about the attacks, I clicked the browser refresh button on cnn.com over and over. And now, out of a sort of ptsd-meets-ocd habit, I still check cnn.com randomly and often. This explains why I am often the first to hear about important breaking cnn.com-worthy headlines, for instance on today’s homepage: “don’t adjust monitor: puppy IS green“.

I am supposed to get 6 others to do the same, like an evil chain letter, but how about some of you post your 6-unimportant-things in the comments? or not, either way.

Dear The Internets:

DISCLAIMER: Prepare yourself for a somewhat-shameless ploy for your hard-earned-money. But this time, I’m not asking you to help me buy a pirate ship or a wax model of myself, it’s for The Good ™, I promise.

On May 31st, I will be participating in a Punch-A-Thon benefit for the Center for Anti-violence Education (CAE)* and I’m a-lookin’ for sponsors and fellow punchers.

It’s like a walk-a-thon, except, instead of getting sponsored by the mile, you get sponsored by the punch (punching into the air, not at a person, and most assuredly nowhere even NEAR a gift donkey). And it will be in sunny prospect park AND there will be snacks AND face-painting AND most importantly of all, I may or may not be wearing a fancy new pair of Chuck Norris ACTION PANTS:

So here’s how it works:

• you can sponsor me by the punch (example: at 5 cents a punch, 500 punches would be $25)
• or you could do a flat sponsorship (even $10 or 15 would rock my socks, just donate online here and reference “meredith & punchathon”)
• or if you live locally and want to participate, download the flier/form here
• OR none-of-the-above, which is totally AOK.
  

Email me for more info.

* CAE is a 34-year-old nonprofit in brooklyn that offers free courses in self defense for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, of which I also happen to be on the board of directors. (oooo “board of directors”, faaaancy).

Rare moment of earnesty: I am a craptacular board member. We are supposed to fundraise- that is what a board does. But I am usually too mortified to directly ask my friends for support; I know that many of you are as paycheck-to-paycheck as I am. So anyway, I tossed and turned about whether or not to post this here. I promise that the next post will be whimsical and absurd!